"The avant garde never looked so cheap or so damn good."
-- San Francisco Bay Guardian

The following films have been selected for this year's hilo film festival. Come check them out!

Program I - Friday March 30h @ 8pm & Saturday March 31 @ 10pm

Bit Plane - Bureau of Inverse Technology, Melbourne, San Francisco, Berlin
Dear xxx - Daniel Cavey, San Francisco
4 Vertigo - Les LeVeque, New York City
Gauze - Cara Plouffe, Vancouver, Canada
Last Pack - Jim Haverkamp, Durham, NC
Lesson One - Courtney Booker & Greg Rozum, San Francisco
Lunch - Sarah Shute & Matt Smith, Santa Monica
Monster Business - Jeff Gove, New York City
Special Report - Bryan Boyce, San Francisco
The Red Scorpion - Tom Hodgson, Tucscon

Program II - Saturday March 31 @ 8pm & Sunday April 1 @ 8pm

Dreamtime - Molly Lynch, Berkeley
Election Collectibles - Bryan Boyce, San Francisco
Hospital Food - Joe Tunmer, Brighton, UK
I Like Men - Anne Maguire, San Francisco
ID Citizen - Diego Velasco, Caracas, Venezuela
Island to Island - Soopum Sohn, Glendale, CA
Moving Illustrations of Machines - Jeremy Solterbeck, San Francisco
Survival of the Illest - Michael Kennedy, Metairie, LA
The Bather - Cameron Ester, Peterborough, Canada
Three Legged - Paul Harrison & John Wood, UK

Click here for more information on this year's hi/lo festival.

Since 1997 the San Francisco production company and comedy collective Killing My Lobster has organized the hi/lo film festival. From humble beginnings at a sofa-saturated screening room in the city's North Beach District to the 500 seat Victoria Movie House in the Mission, the hi/lo film festival has evolved into a major West Coast showcase for independent low-budget film makers.

In the fall of 1997 Lobsters Paul Charney, Brian L. Perkins and Marc Vogl produced a short film called Space Chocolate and presented it at the group's first hi/lo film festival in conjunction with the works of other Bay Area and West Coast film makers who all had more ideas than they did money. The film was a success and has gone onto screenings around the world, and the festival sold out five times as well.

Nearly four years and many films later, the hi/lo film festival continues to prove that big imaginations are more important than fat wallets. Films featured range from animations, short narratives and abstract imagistic explorations to micro-features, documentaries, and uncategorizable creations. Though in most cases they are as different and distinct as night and day, the films can all be classified under the same rubric. They are high concept works made on minimal budgets that seek and achieve originality in the face of increasing industrial standardization in the movie business; they privilege ideas and creativity over imitation and slickness and each, in its own way, proves that talented, dedicated people can bring their visions to fruition in the film medium.

Hundreds attend the three-night festival (true to its low-budget ambitions tickets cost just $7 a show) each year and the festival receives press coverage from numerous local and national magazines and newspapers. hi/lo film festival organizers Brian L. Perkins and Marc Vogl have appeared on local television and radio shows to talk about the festival and have explained to a very nice talk-show host in Australia why, when it comes to making movies, $40 million dollars can kill a good idea.